The Komagata Maru, Anticoloniality, and the Itinerant Politics of Indigeneity
Renisa Mawani, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
As we mark the centenary of the Komagata Maru’s arrival in Vancouver Harbor, the ship continues to be remembered primarily as an apogee of Canadian exclusion. As important as this historical narrative is in illuminating Canada’s long history of legalized racism and its ongoing politics of settler colonialism, the ship’s journey, I argue, must also be viewed as a global voyage that facilitated new entanglements between imperial jurisdictions. As the ship crisscrossed the Pacific and Indian Oceans it engendered connections between India, the Dominions, and other British colonies. Importantly, its voyage galvanized support from British Indians across the empire, most notably in India and South Africa. Drawing from my book, Across Oceans of Law, this talk foregrounds one effect of the Komagata Maru’s journey: the emergence of a transnational anticoloniality that engendered a global and itinerant politics of indigeneity.